For the many years, supermarket shopping has been available, there have been continuing efforts to speed up the customers' checking out process. In so doing, there have been continuing efforts to reduce the overall costs of such speed up processes and related equipment, and also to reduce the physical effort and time consumed by both the customer and the checker. With the availability of the code scanners, in turn quickly establishing the current prices and totalling the same, there are needs for processes and apparatus to gain greater benefits from the utilization of the scanners. How such scanners are used is described in a publication of the Fred Meyer stores of Washington and Oregon entitled, "The Computer Assisted Check Out."
Some of the developments of the past which have been directed to these objectives, before the arrival of the scanner, and which certainly would work well with scanners, are the patents which concern grocery carts, which each individually have their own conveyors, and which unload oftentimes on additional conveyors located at the checkout locales. In 1964, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,145,856 Messrs. Lachance and Ciborowski illustrated and described their grocery cart with its own self contained conveyor for unloading the cart as the conveyor was in effect the bottom of the cart. An adjacent conveyor was available at the checkout locale. In 1966, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,270,837, Mr. Armand A. Lachance, illustrated and described his automatic grocery cart which had conveyor unit, without his own drive, as the bottom of a cart. At the checkout locale an adjacent conveyor when powerred to receive the customers' items leaving the cart, also with an extending drive unit, powered the conveyor of this automatic grocery cart. In 1969, Garth Close, in his U.S. Pat. No. 3,446,315, disclosed his grocery cart with a front opening gate and a conveyor bottom, which was driven, upon contacting the moving conveyor positioned at the checkout locale, to thereby unload the items from the cart conveyor on to checkout conveyor. In 1969, Messrs Lachance and Howard, in their U.S. Pat. No. 3,454,139, described and illustrated their automatic grocery cart, which had a conveyor bottom. Upon its abutment to a conveyor at a checkout locale the checkout conveyor powered the cart bottom conveyor to unload the items from the cart. In 1972, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,700,074, Mr. Shoffner, shows and tells about his adjustable carts, not having their own conveyor components, but being adjustable to be unloaded on different height conveyors located at checkouts locales. He also disclosed how purchased items could be removed from one cart, tallied, and then placed into an adjacent cart thereby eliminating most of the counter areas provided by many checkout stands. In 1972 in U.S. Pat. No. 3,678,660, and in 1974 in U.S. Pat. No. 3,792,757, Malcolm E. Musser illustrated and described his basket cart unloading apparatus, wherein in reference to about seventy percent of the bottom of his grocery cart, bottom cantilevered longitudinals, were guided between spaced belts and pulleys of an unloading conveyor located at a checkout stand, to unload most items from the grocery cart, with some items at the back thirty percent, often requiring the long reach of the checker. Following the unloading of the cart, its direct reversing for seventy percent of its bottom length was required to clear the conveyor belts and pulleys. Subsequently, the cart was not nestable with other like carts. There are nestable carts in use wherein the basket and other support components are tapered in a horizontal plane for nesting engagement as one cart is pushed with its front initially bearing against the rear of the cart ahead, and then the carts are overlapped. Moreover, as shown and explained by Sylvan N. Goldman in U.S. Pat. No. 2,676,026, the baskets of carts and also portions of the support components may first be pivoted vertically and then all the tilted components are designed to nest, when the carts are overlapped for temporary storage. Although the unloading of carts by using conveyors is well presented in these prior patents, there remained needs, as yet unfilled, to increase the overall efficiency of all the checkout functions, reduce costs, lessen human effort, and enhance the overall capabilities of the scanners.